Dr. Scroll Bar or how I learned to love my mouse roller.

>Alan
Samantha Whales was a big-boned woman of statuesque proportions. Had she ever ventured outside the village she would almost certainly have achieved International Beauty status. However, she never left the village, so that possibility was moot. Whenever Big Jake Mennon saw her his jaw went slack. When he first set eyes on her he immediately hired her to manage Truck Sales and Leasing at the dealership. When Revan O'Donnell saw her his jaw went slack too. But all Revan ever did was drool.

> Rob
She glided into the Angel Inn lobby and spied Revan standing near the back of the bar holding a pint and leaning on a barstool in such an awkward way she thought he might fall over. She swished over beside him and lifted the right cheek of her bum up onto the seat and stared into Revan's astonished face. "Wanna rent a nice truck?" she asked as Revan wiped drool from his chin. "Ahla thuck?" Revan gurgled, fighting his impediment. "Good, I think you and I can do business" Samantha whispered as she slid the rest of the way up onto the bar stool and reached over to adjust Revan's tie. "Ord thuck muth" blurted Revan to which Samantha replied "that's OK we can make it work" at which point Revan turned white as a sheet and tried to sip some of his beer. Some of the boys on the other side of the bar tried to sip their beer too. Samantha had that effect on men where ever she went.

<Rob> Pair of heavy walnut lawyer's reception chairs for sale once used by Paul Newman in Absence of Malice. Acquired from Don May when he quit the Rousseau Coach House in Ancaster in '80.

<Alan> …ya right, Paul Newman…and I’ve got a pair of Munroe’s jeans from The Misfits hanging in my closet….untouched by Don May, I might add...

<Rob> Actually the chairs are exactly duplicates Paul Newman's, but its the same thing. Akin to the Macie's shelves. When you see them in a movie its a feel good about a deal thing. I also have a solid quarter cut oak map cabinet that looks just like one Woody Allen used to store the set drawings for A Mid Summer Night's Dream. All craftsman wood joints with a screw or nail in the piece. See photo attached. Price also very negotiable.

<Alan> …ya, well, the joinery on that Woody Allen map cabinet is pretty nice. But you should see the stitching on the Munroe jeans…

<Rob> I found this pic under one of the walnut chair cushions. Maybe they *are* Hollywood chairs. Maybe this could be the new big-boned beauty working the truck lease dept at Mennon Motors.

<Alan> Indeed she could be. And if I’m not mistaken, she’s pointing out the location of the dealership on the new Streetscaping, Traffic and Design (STD) Plan for Main Street, Virgil ON. A plan originally ‘conceived’ in a multi-alphabetic planning partnership in Toronto, Ontario, in fact copped, again if I’m not mistaken, from Orange County, California, and Nomads’ Estates Planned and Gated Community (PGC), Dubai….I have a signed reproduction of this very plan hanging on my office wall and will make it available for a very attractive price….Virgil ON!

<Filshie> Blog material

<Rob> Absolutely blog food. She could also be pointing to the top secret location of a new Tim Donut shop and potential hole in the universe. Or it could be secret site for the new Regional offices near the Brock U campus. Pretty sure its not the Nomads' PGC - no sign of a wall but the multi-alphabetic planning partnership never shows walls in its plans. Part of the established dictom - "white can do right out of sight".

<Rob> Check this out bloggers. This looks suspiciously like the new big-boned blonde working in the truck leasing dept at Jake Mennon Motors in VirgilON. Floating in the ether of the Internet, the caption with this was "St. Davids". That makes it during the filming of "Niagara" and the place she stayed in St. Davids was Ife's Old Mill Inn [now 137 Creek Rd]. Accompanying her was Joseph Cotton and some say the great Joe DiMaggio was with her.

<Rob> A few of the pShop boys on the blog pooched their bird and had some fun with the image record. What a great way to end a friday of snow and damnation.

<Alan> …I actually saw this happen this morning in Jordan, just across the street from the Inn on the Twenty in the parking lot. We were there for the not-quite regular but more than periodic Niagara planners’ meeting.

BW told me I was full of it for suggesting to young Derek Wittlib that people move to Welland from all over North America so they can run their dirt bikes on the Seaway lands. Apparently Derek was on the point of believing me…

Jack Bernardi has a new Acura. CC wanted to know how come he didn’t buy GM and support local industry. Drew Semple pointed out there are now more Honda’s made in Ontario than GM products. Then we drove back to the office…
.
<Rob> Some say people move here to hike the lovely forests of Thorold.

<Filshie> "Forests" don't immediately spring to mind when thinking "Thorold".

<Rob> They do to Barb Wiens. She worked for tree huggers there.

<Rivers> Obviously she didn't do a very good job!

<Rob> Ha. Neither does the magic Places to Grow Plan. Throold is one of the many spellers in that uninspired mess. Along with "freight-supportive land use" policies and maps that disregard the Welland Canal. Mind how the Plan would read if the Welland Canal ran between, let's say, Scarborough and Newmarket :<) Toronto planners are a culture of meddlers. But you have to admit, they do clean up well for luncheons in fancy hotels.

Hope you are all getting ready for the inlaw Samantha Wales on the QuesT blog. If A's vibes are true, and they always are, her impact on the Angel should be really something. There is a rumour floating around VirgilON that she swung by there just the other night and hooked up with a deep river outfitter on the hunt for a 40 year old sturgeon.

Well, I'm off to the north for a couple of days for what the MMAH call "Core Team" meetings. They love buzzies like "Core Team" - that one popped up in the movie Elmer Gantry the other night. As if there were enough people to round out a full team :<) I suggested we could set up a citizens' blog to encourage distance participation and they promised to "look into all possible uses of new technologies" and investigate what I meant by "blog" :<))) Sudbury people. Nothing happened.
Don't panic and remember those towels.

And . . . . scroll a tad for Christmas images of our time.

<Alan> Yes! And it’s really cool if you wind it up to 1600%....

<Rivers> CSN & Y came on the radio when this opened - I was wasted for 2 hours!!!!!!!!!!!!

<Rob> I'm off to VirgilON and maybe over to the Angel for some fish and chips. Don't panic y'all.

<Alan> …the Angel is going to figure prominently in QuesT ’06, coming to the blog soon. Some may wish to panic…

<Rob> Having a pint in there with Leah can be quite an experience. Eyes shift and faces pale as men around the bar realize the permit lady is sitting in the corner with her back to the wall.

<Alan> …as intimidating as the permit lady can be, they ain’t seen nuthin’ yet…

<Susan F.> ...they are all probably in awe of you too, because she allows you to live with her.

<Rob> To most of them I'm the village idiot with the camera. To others, like the Greek ducking out the back door, I seem invisible next to the permit lady. Alan may have notions of intimidation and panic, but I have seen the effect of the permit lady sitting in the Angel with her digital camera in full view. The guilty become detectible as if by magic.
<time snip> Leah reminds me that there was in fact no digital cam in full view. I often have problems distinguishing between reality and fiction in my memory. I learned that watching Ron Reagan.
I am trying very hard to stay abreast of where things are at for the youth. I gave up on rap "music" but between local gov tv coverage and rare movies in the fish hut in Harpswell I discoverd techTV and the "attack of the show" blog.
This is part of what I received this morning from the 'attack' bloggers - bearing in mind they have their own tv show with daily national syndication in the US.
Drew McWeeny of Ain't it Cool News is in the house, and so is Kat Hinzman, the unofficial queen of User Created. Brendan interviews the cast and crew of The Ringer. Super Import Models Aiko Tanka and Ms. Jerilee swing by to test their fragging skills in the LAN Party. Sarah has a Damn Good Website, and we review the latest titles in our Fresh Ink comic books roundup. Plus, we reveal our four favorite (and one least favorite) gadgets from 2005.
Youth is wasted on the young.

<Barb> For the politically correct people out there….http://www.illwillpress.com/xmas.html

<Rob> Ya, fuck you neo-yuppy scumbags!! Fuck you!! Quit pissin' Santa off. Haha, what a great cartoon!! Thanks to Chez Bambi. http://www.illwillpress.com/xmas.html

I'll take this great email moment to recommend the "Breakfast With Berringer" FMradio show daily on Q107. In fact I think it should be the show officially sanctioned by our QuesT blog.

This morning Berringer had Rompin' Ronnie Hawkins [aka Da Hawk] on to promote the annual fundraiser for abused kids. They raised over half a million$ this week. Not bad considering the goal was 50 grand!! Three cheers for Toronto the good.
Anyway, The Hawk is in town to close out his career with gigs at Massey Hall and Stratford where over one hundred "crippled up ole musicians" will be on stage, including many former Band members - Levon and most of Janice Joplin's backup.
This morning The Hawk did a mind-blowing live 9 minute rendition of Who Do Ya Love? on the show just before 9am - with the full band in the studio-stage. He introduced some new young members including a kid with the most amazing three-slap on an upright bass I have ever heard. The Hawk sounds strong and healthy again and offered to whisper words in Berringer's ear "that more common men have never heard". He admitted to being told he had a really great time in the 60's and implored the studio crew to hold the women back after he finished. He explained that back in the day, he and Levon "made love to girls in so many different ways they had to like one of us".

During the performance he yelled at one of the band to stop doing the splits because "we don't need no saprano". Funny because I remember as a young kid chinning myself on the window ledge of the round dancehall on the beach at Port Dover to see The Hawk sing and do the splits by dropping the mic stand. I had never heard of him before - it was around 1957. He was slim with a huge shock of black hair and trimmed black beard. People said he'd come across Lake Erie from Erie PA - on a high speed launch in the dark!! He later did many gigs with Conway Twitty at the Flamingo in Hamilton before it was taken over by Johnny Papallia, Rocco Perri and the mafia from Buffalo.

<Alan> ...I have to say, Chez Bambi rules at Christmas! (I wonder how the front of the lair is decorated?)

<Rob> I can tell by ribald post that she's working the lair up today into something quite festive. Picture this. A tunnel of mistletoe inside the front door with a "Huggup Alley" sign hanging at the dimmly-lit far end.

<Alan> ...Carol hits the road...
> For you younger readers, before the days of cell-phones when we were on
> the road the next and only possible contact was the mail drop at the
> Canadian embassy...in some parts of the world these were few and far
> between, and the Brits looked after us....if anyone was sending us money
> these embassies were sometimes desperately sought out...Canada House in
> London was always a big favorite because you could usually find a bank
> near-by that had some rapport with a bank back home, and could trade
> currency...if you had to wait there was usually a flop available in Earls
> Court Road....I got lucky and landed in a flat in Chelsea with some emigre
> Spaniards who worked at the Cuban embassy...the embassy parties were lots of
> fun....those were the days!

<Susan F> Yeah - remember those desperate searches for the Am Ex office, and foreign
> branches of Canadian Banks? You used to be able to use foreign branches of
> Canadian banks as a mailing address. I wonder if they still do that?
> Probabaly not, but if Blackberry is down, maybe they will reinvent the
> service.

<Leah> Yes, you bring back found memories for me also. The embassy in Paris was also particularly helpful. Money orders had to be cashed at a branch of a Canadian branch because Barclays wanted a couple of months to do the deed. I remember the Royal Bank branch very well.

I also remember taking rolls of slide film and mailing them back home to Canada for processing (that was free - the expense was in the film). My Dad would dutifully take the film to the processor. He was so desperate to see the slides he bought a second had slide projector at McTamnies in Toronto. My parents had fun looking at the images but damned if they knew just what they were looking at - or what country for that matter.

<Rob> Well hi to mom at kenhall. Lurkers are always welcome in bloggoland.
And yes, you bring back fond memories for me too. Let's see. Ah, just the other day I rolled into fair Tulip Inn on the Big East following a midnight council meeting in God's country. I was dead beat but switched on the Detroit cable tv in ye olde motel suite and lo and behold it was a Trailer Park Boys marathon. Having never seen the Boys, I figured I'd watch a few minutes and then a few more and then I was laughing so hard there was no way I could fall asleep.

First of all, I watched Julian lather his face and shave while smoking and eating a banana at the same time. Cuel. Then Ricky and Julian go for a booze meeting in a concrete culvert under a super highway and a gunfight breaks out but nobody gets hit. Very violent but funny as hell. They do the deal and Ricky agrees to babysit Julian's Jack Russell terrier while baking up some weed cakes for the old ladies in the home - to keep them calm. Ricky grabs the oven rack with his bare hand to pull out the weed cakes but burns his hand and the cakes hit the floor and break into many small cake pieces which the Jack Russell gobbles up with great voracity. Ricky, meanwhile, is desperately looking through a cupboard drawer for an oven mit when he finds a loaded Baretta 9mm handgun. He takes the oven mitts and turns back and bends over to the stove just as his little daughter takes the Baretta from the drawer, aims it right at his ass and fires. At that point I good crazy. The little girl says into the camera "I shot daddy in the bum and this cake tastes funny". She tosses her piece of cake out the door as Ricky is writhing in pain on the floor. The Jack Russell goes after the last of the cake, wolfs it down, and swells up like a Macey's float with legs extending in all directions.

Julian arrives and is really pissed at the condition of his dog, to the chagrin of Ricky who claims to be bleeding to death. To avoid the police they go to the local vet who induces vomitting in the dog and digs the slug out of Ricky's bum. In payment the vet asks the boys to go to a local farm [who owes past accounts] and steal is garden tractor from the barn. Which they do but during the heist the farmer spies them and lays down fire on them using a high powered deer rifle. Ricky is shot in the ass again during the getaway. On and on it goes. I was up half the night in pain laughing. I waited for hours to see Bubbles but no luck.

After dark the next day I swung into the Tim Hortons at south Gravenhurts. The MTO weigh station was packed full of trucks as it was extremely cold and coffee was the order of the evening. The place was packed. I walked up to the counter and said hi to Vera who was loudly complaining about something "galore". "We have had it galore!!" she stated again as she took my order. "My GAWD galore is right" said the big woman with the hair net followed by "and the condition of that men's bathroom my GAWD." The door swung open in the wind and a young trucker in a tawny jump suit blew in with dirty blonde hair up in all directions. Vera looked at him. "Gimme two tripple tripples fast" said the young man. "See I told ya" said Vera looking at the big woman who blurted "my GAWD you're right!!!" We all looked at the trucker who shrugged and said "what??" The women didn't answer but tended to the coffee and I left. I was still hurting too much from the Trailer Park Boys to laugh at anything but something for sure was about to happen in the donut shop.

<Rivers> Some day I'll show you the passport picture I had taken in Marrakech - if I can remember the whole story.

<Rob> Ah c'mon, let's see it now.

<Rivers> I'd like to but every time I see it I have a strange out of body experience and loose track of it again.

<Rob> Ya, we can dig that. Leah and I have our '79 passports somewhere. We could be pursuaded .

<Alan> ...Ill toss in the visa photo I had taken in one of those self-serve photo booths in a Woolworth's in Los Angeles in '72. I'd been awake for about 72 hours at that point, and was leaving for Mexico the next day...that is one ugly picture!....

<Alan> ...May you all have a prosperous New Year! I expect to be looking for a line of credit....

<Rivers> Be careful everybody. This looks like one of those Nigerian Money Scam letters! Check out AcamBusters for the latest on the A Gummo Brazilian Rotary Scam.

<Rob> Those must be *some* running shoes. Minds me of swinging by the new Super Walmart at Cook's Corners Harpswell Maine this summer. Picked up a grand pair of high jumper Dr. Schoals gels for about $30US. Still can't jump but the shoes look grand indeed. They had good deals on bikinis too but Leah took a pass.

<Rob> Ya I sort of sniffed a scheme to finance some die-cast to scale Ferrari's. Speaking of die-cast models, I was just downtown getting myself tied into the Glenridge student housing rats nest when I stopped by the Central Niagara Model Store on St. Paul. I went in, for the first time actually, to buy chair caning but whoah what did I find, you may ask. The motherload of model trains, boats, planes, doll houses and to scale cars of all kinds. Electric trains set up and running all over the store on tracks. The guy says to me, "hi I hope you're not looking for an HO scale 8000 because we sold the last two dozen in Ontario today." "No" I said, "but a 64 powder blue Poncho ragtop might catch my attention." "Rilly?" "Todely". The poor bugger was still tearing the store apart looking when I had to leave. But y'know, that would make a nice visit Alan, its much closer than Waterloo Uptown.

<Alan> ...and I have a vision of a QuesT '06 Trip to Autophile on Eglinton near Laird. There's no doubt a Tim Hortons near-by....

<Susan F> Don't even think of going there without consulting me first you guys.

<Rob> Sounds like a good plan. I was thinking of how quiet my donut shop experiences have been lately as I swung into Thrifty's to rent a Camry for Leah to charge around in today. The whole summer came back in a flash as Will Sulymon and the other rental woman wanted to hear the "Mr. Lucky Man" story all over again. Apparently its become a cult legend among all the shops in the Performance Cars automall. Apparently they still have not repaired the car and there is a line up to rent it "as is". It has what we used to call in Hamilton, a "real pranger look."

<Rivers>The 24 hour Tim's is a block or so east on Brentwood but there is a Second Cup on Laird and a honking great LCBO on Wickseed. My only possible example of space holes above that Tim's was a woman stomping out last weekend at about 12:30 AM exclaiming that it was too long of a wait - she was the only person in line ahead of me. The Second Cup is like tres efficient though. However, the Finnish Seniors Apartment Building on the south side near Sutherland could be a source of other-worldly things. The Finns were pretty close to Commies eh.

<Alan> ...race ya ta the finish, Dellie!!...to quote The Laird...

<Rob> Ya Finns are odd. I had a Finnish client years ago named Micellavida. He owned a real estate brokerage in Mississauga and personally held thousands of acres in unorganized townships of middle Parry Hoot. Those townships were great to work in as there were no councils, no by-laws and the building code did not apply, hence no building permits were necessary. The approval authority for land division was a wee chinese lady at Queen's Park and every time I swung by to file consent applications she would ask what time zone the area was in. I would always give her a different answer and she would laugh far too long. I did three subdivisions for Micellavida, one or two lots at a time and the little Chinese lady never made any spatial relationships. The fox was in the hen house for well over two years. She looked at me oddly the day of my final trip to see her when I applied for consent to create a right of way for miles of road access to 38 waterfront lots that looked suspiciously familiar to her. Anyway, when I finally did meet Micellavida in person I realized his name was actually Mikael Lavida. My secretary and I had always pronounced his name the way did on the phone where his Finnish accent made it sound like Micellavida. He was so bemused by the story that he took a huge bottle of Russian vodka from his desk and we both drank ouselves silly. Something he apparently did in the office, frequently.

There is a settlement of Finnish descent in Haliburton on the Burnt River in a place called Kinmount. They don't celebrate or acknowledge their Finnish heritage there. There is another one sitting on a beautifully hidden little place called Ilfracombe on equally beautiful Buck Lake. Buck Lake is among the Muskoka lakes but not in Muskoka, just over the back Huntsville line in Parry Hoot. Everything about the place is Finnish. Church names, road names, mail boxes, cemeteries, halls etc. You can tell by the amazing look of Buck Lake how it attracted people to locate a town there. Lord only knows why so many Finns settled there or how they found it in the first place. Typically, the boundary road in is poorly maintained and getting to Ilfracombe can be a tad trying if you come at it through the great Novar Bog, as I did, killing time between public meetings. Emerging from the Bog you are greated by a billboard that says "Coming Soon - Tim Hortons - Ya Right". 

<Rob> Some people are all talk. Leah '77, me '78, us '81.

<Alan> ...ya, ya, ya, it's coming, soon as I sort through the pile of chocolate bar wrappers that are my sole mementoes of my trip to South America....and as soon as I get my scanner up and running now that my computer's back from its revitalization...gotta love Bill Avakian....his Dad still runs the shoe repair out of the back of the computer shop...

<Barb> Best shoe repair shop in town…….

<Rob> I, for one am bowled over, in a podiatric sense. Cobbling Leah's boots has been a trial since we left the RMHW, now an obscure bunion on the GGH next to a pimple further down.

<Alan> There was a genuine cobbler on Kibbutz Dovrat. He'd grown up in the Vienna ghetto, survived the camps and a harrowing trip to Palestine, and was generally living out his life in peace.

One day these proto-yuppies arrived from Connecticut. They were a married couple on a European Tour, had garaged their BMW in Athens, and wanted to check out the "kibbutz lifestyle" before returning to their teaching jobs back home. They had expensive clothes and walking boots. They took the walking boots to the cobbler to have the heels replaced.

The cobbler took the boots and cut them into thin strips of material. When the proto-yuppies came to pick them up he handed the shredded boots to them and suggested they wear sandals. When they protested, he shrugged. When he shrugged, they were puzzled.

For some reason this anecdote has stuck in my mind as somehow particularly instructive.

BTW, for holiday reading Andrea has passed on to me Heath and Potter's The Rebel Sell: Why the Culture Can't Be Jammed. Big word among the free-thinkers at McGill this past spring. Highly recommended treatise on the difference between dissent and deviance. Now available in paper-back.

<Rob> Wow I was just hacking away getting ready to post bloggo material into the ether under Samantha Whales and kappow in comes proto-yuppies and "The Rebel Sell". Hey I can tell you, cognitive dissonance is growing in our society and its showing up amazingly often among the pols in small single tier muns north of the GTA. "We shall not be pimples on the ass of Toronto" one pol was heard to yell across a frozen field of Jerusalem artichokes.

Christmas Eve should not be complicated by such thoughts.

Speaking of cobblers, last week I heard the story of the cobbler's bench once owned by Lorenzo Cunningham Tracey Brooks of a backwoods burg in Parry Hoot. Apparently the bench survives to this day but mice have eaten the foam rubber seat into a shape that looks sort of like the State of Idaho. Barb might read something into that. Anyway, Lorenzo Cunningham Tracey Brooks lit out one day from haying in the field across the river to go west to help rebuild a town that had been burned off in Minnesota. When he got there he discovered that he was to be the guest of two Chippewa girls living in a tent. Apparently he didn't return home for years.

Merry Christmas QuesT bloggers!! The Samantha Whales episode is now underway in sort of an evolutionary sense, wobbling into existence with remarkable Munroe likenesses. A creative event is needed to kick start her adventures into a higher gear - they seem stalled with Revin at the Angel Inn bar. Nevertheless, I felt it only fair to post what we have so far because there is obvious interest from our regulars in Maine and Niagara plus some exotics this week from Karachi, Kapuskasing, Milano, Nairobi, Bhopal, Chandigarh, Ottawa, Telford UK, Gatineau, Bhaunagar, and the Ministry of Municipal Affairs & Housing in Sudbury :<))) People have actually googled "power pigs". We need good copy to get things really rolling. Best of the season and enjoy the fireplace.

<Barb> Another best shoe repair in town is Errol’s on St. Paul Street….he also repairs luggage in case you are thinking of packing your bags and wanting to head out of town to check out that “kibbutz lifestyle” once again………

<Rob> Any land use planner worth his/her salt should keep a bag packed near the door, ready to move to a new job at a moment's notice. A good luggage repair shop is therefore essential to a decent land use planner. Why, I remember a day when Barb's luggage spent more time in the air than it did on the ground, not counting layovers in snow storms of course. And just yesterday I was tidying up for Christmas and unearthed a missing set of Minister's mods in the dirty laundry compartment of our new Air Canada roller board. Ready to move out is a necessity but I'm not at all sure about heading for kibbutzes on the West Bank these days.

<Rivers>Canadian Passport from Marrakech 1973.

<Rob>As if in some out of body experience, I am moved to rise from a dead sleep at 4am on Boxing Day to fire up the Pantry Office and upload these to the Samantha Whales episode. At least I think I am.

<Rob to Alan> Hey, once we cleared away the exploded Pyrex shards (a dirty little Corning secret I see - big blog issue on line) and vacuumed up the exploded espresso grounds, lo and behold we found your Christmas CD and Christmas Story DVD. At least I think we did. Will know better when the sun comes up. I'm having some sort of out of body experience with Rivers' '73 passport image.

<Rivers>All I can say is "far freekin out!"

<Alan> ...when you think about it, it's a wonder they didn't deport us all into Deep Space....

<Alan> ...always wear your flak jacket in the kitchen, and keep your helmet and visor strapped down...

<Rob> I woke up this morning and it was 11:30am, 11:30am!! Thank God its boxing day. Leah says, every once in a while I sleep like that. Anyway, I was dreaming about packing up my plan to teach high school in 1970 and was pounding down the 401, leaving Kingston for good. I'd done all of my observation stints in high schools and was ensconced in Queen's courses when it hit me that teaching high school sucked. Bummer. So I lit out of Queen's and was somewhere around the Newburgh interchange on 401 when a car pulled along side and the driver gave me the high sign to pull over. In real life it had been a guy named Tom, actually from Newburgh, that I'd worked with all one summer doing the Trent-Severn Waterway Plan with Norman Pearson. I liked Tom, a stable married student who'd come back to University to get away from a career teaching high school. We stopped on the 401 shoulder and talked for quite a while, in the real world, as he gave me a told ya so lecture. In my dream, I'd glanced over at the other driver and seen Rivers looking like that Marakesh passport image :<O  So I guess I *did* get up at 4am. Holy crap, there is something out of body about that thing! Oh man, thank the good lord its not a work day, the groove is nowhere in sight. I think there may be a hole in the universe over the Pantry Office right now and I think its time to root out a towel.

<Susan F> Its a photo of Jesus!

<Rivers> A close confidant - however, several young women in Spain also noted the resemblance.

<Susan F> So - are we all lounging about on Boxing Day in our pyjammas? We went to the Royal York Hotel for dinner last night as a novelty. Faded glory. Mixed reviews. Benefits: no turkey carcass to dominate our lives for the rest of the week, no dishes, no left-over jellied salads slumping in the fridge, no Christmas Day culinary panic, Costs: no leftovers.

<Hutch> Hi All. Just in case your suffering slightly from celebrating, perhaps drinking too
much plum pudding. This site brings you a drug add worthy of prime time TV http://panexa.com/
Yours, Bill -- feeling better after a long walk --

<Alan> Will consider all the above while on the road. Just in case there's a Deep Meaning that hasn't announced itself yet. Meantime, thanks for a great dinner, and a great evening! A&S

<Susan F.> Robert Stephens says the elder Rivers looks just like Steve's Dad aka "Tiny" Rivers. I wish that our scanner was hooked up and running. Its in the basement. Collecting dust. I can't face it. nor the dust. I would send pictures. I would have to locate and dust those too. Hats off to all of you who live such organized lives that you can find old pictures of yourselves, and scan them, and send them.

<Alan>Alright. What could be better than sitting round on a Sunday afternoon listening to Velvet Underground and playing with our Xmas toys? In this case a scanner and some imaging software. So if the attachments have problems, please let me know. As promised in a previous post, I’ve been rummaging around in the old travel trunk and found these ‘visa’ pictures. Let’s see if we can recover some more memories.

Pencil sketch by Elizabeth Webb. In a pub in Maldon, England, circa September, 1970. ‘Marga’ had just returned to Spain a few days before, and I was wondering whether I would see her again. In fact I did, in the Canary Islands six months later…with life-altering consequences…

Visa picture. Taken in Constitution Square, Athens, by an anonymous street photographer using a box camera on tripod. Circa October, 1971. For a visa to Israel issued to William ‘Billy’ Ozark, aka ‘Ozark Billy’ (see previous post regarding assumed identity). The legendary marble tournaments on Mykonos, Rhodes, and Cyprus were soon to follow…

Visa picture. By machine, in a Kresge’s or Woolworth’s, Hollywood, California, circa October, 1972. For a visa to Mexico issued to Dr. Marlin Ray, Rx. Coincidentally, while I was in the Mexican consulate in Los Angeles I bumped into S.P. whom I hadn’t seen since Grade 8 at Lawrie Smith Public School in Burlington. S.P. was headed south with final destination Sao Paulo, Brazil. I was headed south with final destination La Paz, Bolivia. Haven’t heard from S.P. since. Lawrie Smith P.S. was replaced by a townhouse complex, once the boomers passed through…

Group photo of stranded travelers. Ayacucho, Peru. Taken by an anonymous street photographer using a box camera on a tripod. Circa early 1973. We were stranded when the roads washed out in a storm. After two weeks the federal government flew in a plane to evacuate foreigners to Cuzco. It was a DC3. I will never forget flying over the Andes in that DC3….I was sure I could see the rivets popping out of the wings and dropping into the snow-capped peaks. I am in the back row, left. Standing just in front and to my right (left in the picture) is the mysterious Girl in the Red Dress (see previous post). In the back row, right, with Stetson, is David Appel. His traveling companion Carol Milgram is standing in front of him and to his right (left in the picture). Carol claimed to be a cousin of Allen Ginsberg, and I have no reason to doubt it. David and I hit it off immediately. I was collecting chocolate bar wrappers as my souvenir of South America, and he was collecting match boxes. My friendship with David and Carol led to several trips to NYC in the mid-seventies. Then they disappeared into the Economics Department at Rutgers, and I disappeared into the lush berry fields of Prince Edward County.

Still portrait, Lake Titicaca, believed to be Bolivia. Taken by anonymous street photographer using box camera on tripod. Circa early 1973. At this point I had had a transcendent vision and was on my way back to Canada. On my return I got a job as ‘Red’ Denim at Northern Telecom’s cable plant in Kingston. The grub stake I pulled together paid for planification school at the Real University where I registered as Jack North. For some reason my classmate Marty Lucht found this hilarious. Especially when Gerald Hodge inadvertently addressed me once in a Regional Systems class as ‘Jack’. Marty disappeared back into Montreal after graduation; Pat Marana, who was also a kindred spirit, dropped out at the end of first term and got a job as a baggage handler at Newark airport. He never looked back.

Message from David Appel and Carol Milgram, circa early 1973. David and Carol had the supreme bravery to take the train across Bolivia to Argentina. On arrival in Argentina they sent this note. It’s written on the back of a Noel Aero chocolate bar wrapper, an Argentinean chocolate also available in Bolivia where it competed with the local brand Corona.

I’m now looking for an identity strong enough to pull me out of this planification business….suggestions can be forwarded to this address.

<Rob>I opened the post above from A and came to a sudden conclusion. The Samantha Whales episode on the QuesT blog is rilly kind of fucked up now. Tons on travelog but little on Revin. I said to Leah "I bet that's Lake Titicaca and good old Bolivar on the horse. Leah said, "Jeez I think he's still wearing those same clothes."

Then I started trying to remember whether it was Ayacucho or Arequipa where the kid caught up to me with the reed boat I had ordered on the floating islands of Uros. I did the biggest deal ever transacted on the reeds - $50US using hand signs only. I had mentally kissed the money goodbye. But there it was, one week later, cross-ways in the back seat of a taxi with both rear doors open. The "balsa" reed boat day turned into a violent teachers' demonstration quelled by riot police and water canons. The teachers dug up a cobble street for amunition. I must dig out the photo I took down the muzzle of a machine gun. It filled my 400mm lens - quite by surprise I might add.
--------------------------------------------
<Alan>Here's a memory prompt...Ayacucho is high in the Andes and is a university town. Story when I was there was that the govt had sent all the leftist professors to Ayacucho so they could keep an eye on them. Arequipa, on the other hand, is in the desert below the mountains. On the way to the 'space alien' markings in the sand...

I'd like to see that foto with the gun. When they pointed a gun at me, leaving Ecuador for Peru, I didn't bother to look back, let alone take a picture. A kid caught up to me on the bridge and begged me to stop...

There's more coming on Revan, starting with his childhood in The Bay Area...and those clothes have been washed at least once since the picture was taken...(!)
----------------------------------------
<Rob>Leah figured you must have washed those clothes. Ah yes, Ayacucho also has a very nice market which runs well after dark. I recall ordering a bowl of chicken soup which came with a chicken leg complete with foot and claws. I recall having a splitting altitude headache having come straight up from sea level in one day. Not thinking all too clearly I tossed the chicken foot out the restaurant window to a crowd of kids watching in anticipation of such a stupid move. Pandimonium broke out in the street as the urchins kicked and scratched each other for the foot - to my dismay. The owner of the joint rant out with a shovel and whacked a few of the kids before they ran off.

I recall Arequipa now on the way to the Nasca Desert. Stories of driving across that desert would fill a book - there was *no* road and my gas pump crapped out with sand. We took it apart with Swiss army knives and pushed on. One and only place in Peru I saw wild Vicunia. Years later I sat and listened as Veektor Miratori pontificated at a luncheon all about Vicunia. I recall whispering to him that he was full of shit as I had been there. He's never talked to me since, except at hearings :<)

The pic down the gun barrel was taken by knee-jerk co-incidence. A 400mm lens gazes a long distance and is usually out of focus. I was on the roof of the Hotel Tourista in Arequipa, taking in the riot when I trained the lens on an armoured car. Pulling the lens into focus was a real surprise. I pulled back the focus only to see the soldier on the gun waving me off the roof.

I never made it to La Paz Bolivia because the road was closed. Somebody had just bumped off the President - a fairly regular event, but it closed the border the day I was there. I wanted a Bolivian woman's boler hat to take back to the office. As it turned out they sold them in the market at Cuzco.
----------------------------------------------

<Alan>Ah yes, the winds of change are blowing once again through the subpenthouse. The sounds of Milton Nascimento, Adrianna Calcanhotto, and Chico Buarque infusing the air on my return from my daily toils will now be stilled.

It's time for hibernation. Eating rich foods to excess. Heavy duty sleeping. Spending more time at the office (!).

....or piling onto the blog...

(Barb W. says she's never read a single episode of the blog. But then Barb's an old leg-puller from way back...)

Big Jake Mennon considered Samantha Whales his protege. He was overtly proud of her. He would point her out to friends, colleagues, and business associates with a hearty, "That's Samantha Whales!"

Revan O'Donnell, who had a hearing impairment resulting from a childhood adenoidal condition, always heard Big Jake say, "That Samantha wails!"

To which Revan could only reply, "...rilly..."

Young Revan in The Bay Area

The villagers were quick to point out that Revan wasn’t ‘from around here’. And they were right. In fact, Revan was from the first city down the highway. That city was called The Bay Area.

The Bay Area was a geographic oddity. Most of it was under water. The land mass was punctuated with a series of smaller bays, inlets, and swamps that made the city more a collection of isolated small towns than a single municipal entity.

The Bay Area was settled by early settlers who thought they’d found, through the connection of The Bay to the larger lake, a ready and direct route back to the home country if they needed it. It originated as a service center for the rural hinterland, and its historic growth was owed to advances in agriculture rather than any other factor.

More specifically, The Bay Area grew with the production of peaches and tomatoes in the orchards and fields of the surrounding townships. With the advent of industrialization, The Bay Area specialized in the manufacture of wooden shipping baskets for the fruit and vegetable growers. Thousands were employed in this thriving industry. The downtown was booming; stores and offices were springing up around the central park, and the city engineers were talking about ‘one way traffic’ on the busy streets.

Unbounded prosperity continued to heap wealth on The Bay Area for a few years after the end of hostilities after WW2. But with the post-war economy came plastic. And with plastic came new kinds of baskets that would soon make the old wooden baskets obsolete. The local economy nose-dived quickly and dramatically. Even in the over-stressed offices of the Economic Development Corporation, the black humorists had to admit that by the mid-50’s The Bay Area was ‘a basket case’.

Young Revan came along in time for the swan song of The Bay Area. His parents lived in one of the communities west of the city center, on an inlet that ice fishers preferred in the winter months. Revan’s community was known as Back Bay. His father ran a successful insurance brokerage, and his mother performed clerical duties in the busy office. The neighbours referred to Revan’s mother as ‘the brains of the operation’.

O’Donnell and Associates Insurance specialized in home insurance for the growing suburbs. Back Bay had been singled out by developers as the place to build what were then just becoming sprawling suburbs. Thousands of commuters were buying houses in Back Bay so they could drive an hour or so to work in the even bigger city to the north.

Life looked pretty good, as it did for a lot of kids in the Fifties. Until the day in the first grade when Revan came home from school and found his house a smoldering ruin. The fire trucks were still at the curb. He overheard the fire marshal and fire chief say something about ‘arson’, and heard a walkie-talkie crackle a call from the police department. But both the new Cadillacs were gone, and his parents were nowhere in sight.

Young Revan was placed in the care of his aunt.

By the time he was in senior elementary, Revan was hanging out with the smokers at the bottom of the schoolyard. It didn’t take one of the creative geniuses in the group long to propose calling their community ‘Back Bacon’ after the breakfast food of choice in their fathers’ fishing huts.

At about the same time, young Revan got his first paper route. With it he was to learn the benefits of suburban growth and real estate development. With each new subdivision Revan’s paper route grew. Within a year he had over a thousand customers, and had sub-contracted the route in sections to eager kids who gladly shared their earnings with him.

Revan was making a killing taking a cut from his sub-contractors without taking a single paper to a single door. He spent most of his time hanging out with his gang in the parking lot at the new convenience store, stealing smokes and candy and generally being rowdy. Revan’s gang, consisting of basically the same gang as the bottom of the schoolyard, called themselves ‘The Back Bacon Boys’.

By sixteen, Revan was driving a 1957 Swept-Wing Dodge that he’d bought off his uncle’s used car lot in the East End. It had a car radio that would pull in WKBW and CHUM, and 120 miles on it. Life was looking pretty good again.
----------------------------------------
<Rob>Oh my my, that does so remind me of Woodward Avenue, Freeman basket factory, Indian Cove, Carol's Point, and Sellens Motors on Parkdale North. It makes me so confused. But it is the beginning of a new day and also the end of a very long day all rolled into one. The QuesT blog is streaming in three discreet directions and I'm too fatiqued to code the fucking thing even though the last remaining grey cells still on their feet are yelling "go for it you lazy bastard". But no, the time has come to focus in triplicate. Samantha Whales, Long Bent, and some rilly rilly strange strange that one of the lurkers [F. Paul] calls "courageously revealling ones soft underbelly". He came up with that when Rivers hit us with the Marakesh portrait. I don't think he was copied on the Andean series, yet. Still coming to grips with that one myself. Life is such a trip. I was looking at a pic of myself at Carolyn Gummo's age and the expression faaaaaaaaaaaaak kept crossing my mind. Just yesterday.

Anyway, I'm off to Parry Hoot tomorrow for a couple of days. The true impact of reeve Thomas' accident is hitting and I am being pulled north like a magnet. The chickens, Pal, the cats and Jenny have been relocated from the eco-house on the Maggie. Its sitting empty and vulnerable while Richard carves a new road, a bent road indeed. Somebody gave Jenny a house to use near the hospital. Old Marty Corcoran will run the Council tomorrow night. I asked him how he felt about it and all he said was "oh Christ". Life is such a trip. The last time I saw Marty he was slipping Richard a fiver for some fresh eggs.

Just out the door to the great white northern beyond but *hark*- an invite from Sympatico to set up a free interactive blog on MSN Spaces - which I did in a matter of minutes, whoopdeedoo.

Anybody with a Hotmail or Sympatico account can read and post to the blog using their normal email/password but others need to do a simple sign-up with Billy Gates to get access. No big deal. The system is slick, better than Yahoo Groups, and allows a myriad of customization including photos. The potential is quite unlimited.

For want of anything better, the blog is called "QuesT 06 The Long Bent Highway" and if we have buy-in it could become the next episode clickable directly or from the home base www.hips.com/quest The big difference is you can post to QuesT 06 The Long Bent Highway yourself and configure it to notify you when new entries happen on the site. Same tech as Google Alert emails.

The address for QuesT 06 The Long Bent Highway is http://spaces.msn.com/members/bent06/ I havn't loaded any of the recent posts into it *yet* but I left a welcome howdeedoo test. You are all invited to do likewise and/or make it known what you think.

They also gave me a special address for cell phone access but I figure our bunch is not there yet.

Back in a few. Don't panic out there, and as always, remember the dolphins. As they go, so should we all.
----------------------------------------------
<Filshie>Don't buy tuna - when they fish for tuna they kill dolphins. collateral damage.
---------------------------------------------
<Rob>Fresh bluefin tuna [sushi grade stuff] is hunted off the Maine coast using a harpoon, hand held. They call it "ironing" as opposed to hooking. The story behind tuna in a can must be a horror show. Bailey Island has an annual bluefin tuna hunting contest. The winners are always over 1000 pounds and Japanese buyers are on the dock paying between $6-10US per pound "as caught". As a kid in '64 I brought back a tuna tail and nailed it to dad's martin house pole. It was over three feet across and the vertebrae at the tail were easily 3 inches in diameter. I brought it back in a plastic garbage bag - they had just been invented :<) I recall the back of the old Merc Dynacruiser waggon was a tad ripe. I am already in the zone to go back to Bailey Island despite laying plans otherwise for the 25th anniversary year.
---------------------------

Guys,

I'm still playing with my new scanner and imaging software, and came across this old print taken with a Pentax 35mm SLR. Please let me know if there are any problems with it at your end.

Mike Spence in the BRM at Mosport, I believe the Canadian Grand Prix in 1967. In my opinion the '3 litre formula' F1 cars of the mid-late 60's were the most beautiful and purposeful racing cars ever.

A
--------------------------
<Rob>Beautiful shot. And furthermore - I was also at that event but my memory is extremely clouded. That was the year we ran over the Johnny on the spot in the infield, I do remember that event. I have no recollection of getting back to Guelph. I met a girl some years later who said "remember me, we hitch hiked out of Orono", which scared me half to death.

The Pentax spotmatic 35mm was my life's goal in the late 60's. I borrowed one to shoot the first wedding I ever did - student buds on campus - it blew me away and saved the day as I had no idea whatever how to shoot a wedding. Back then my personal camera was a tiny Canon half-frame 35 that would take 72 slides on a roll of 36. I really thought I had the system by the tail. You mailed the roll to Rochester and back came a huge box of goodies within a week. I took the half frame through a tight system of deep muddy caves in 68 with the McMaster Cave Club. The slides came out but the camera was todely fuked. A guy at the UofGuelph audio-viz dept took it to pieces and washed it under a tap. It worked for a bit then seized up until I sprayed it with wd40 upon which it continued to work until the 1990's when it rusted shut again. I sold it to Burlington Camera along with my darkroom equipment to pay for our 15th anniversary trip to Boston in 96.
------------------------------------
<Alan> Young Revan in Foundations

What Revan hadn’t counted on was his aunt’s influence. Revan’s aunt was a buxom woman without borders. When she took him in she did not allow his presence to alter her routine one iota. As a result, Revan spent a lot of time during his formative years waiting in Foundations.

Every Saturday afternoon Revan’s aunt took him to the downtown department stores to shop for foundations. Sometimes she would take him to the even bigger city to the north where he would encounter foreign women who were also shopping for foundations. Their style of foundation was usually a bit different than the style preferred in The Bay Area. His aunt told him this kind of knowledge was good for his ‘higher education’.

Revan would wait patiently in the fitting rooms for hours while his aunt helped the other women with their ‘fitting’. Most of the women indulged him, bending down in front of him and chucking him under the chin, or playing peek-a-boo around the curtains. Revan enjoyed the attention. He learned more about the details of ‘sizing’ and ‘fitting’ than most boys his age. When the afternoon shopping was finished, his aunt would take him to the soda fountain in the basement and treat him to a hot fudge sundae. Revan always ate the cherry first.

Revan’s aunt took him on other haunts. When he started to read, Revan sounded out the words ‘Ladies and Escorts’. One afternoon as they were leaving a ‘Ladies and Escorts’ a block or so from The Delta, Revan saw a kid with a pedal car come speeding around the corner. Revan thought it would be fun to toss the kid out of the car. He grabbed at the kid, but the kid wrapped his arms around Revan’s neck and started pummeling him on his right ear. Revan had a cauliflower ear for the rest of his life. It added to his hearing impairment. He would blame it on ‘that vicious three year old’, and make the excuse that the kid had sucker punched him. Onlookers were heard to observe that they’d never seen forearms like that on a three year old in all their lives.

So by the time he was sixteen, Revan had a genuine hearing impairment, a cauliflower ear, a 1957 Swept-Wing Dodge, a singular knowledge of women, and a thriving business. All that he didn’t have were his parents. Unbeknownst to him, his parents were in jail in Florida.

One Monday morning, skipping school on a dare, he got in the Dodge and hit the road. He stopped at the convenience store to steal some smokes, and drove to Virgil, ON. It was a turning point. What he found there was going to shape his future.
--------------------------------------------
<Filshie> Hey - I remember when lingerie departments were called "Foundations". It was all very mysterious and faintly alarming. Those were the days of hair curlers and stocking with seams. Alan. What a memory you have.

How would one explain "foundations" to a young woman to-day? Carolyn, for instance. No one would believe. Whale bone? Why would anyone wear whale bones?
------------------------------------
<Alan> A friend of mine worked in Foundations in a downtown department store in Kingston. What she learned about some of the best families was...tut tut tut...mysterious indeed...
-------------------------------
<Alan> Samantha Whales Arrives in Virgil ON

Samantha Whales arrived in the village hitchhiking on a tractor-trailer loaded with processed pork product. The tractor-trailer was headed for a distribution center in Sandusky, Ohio. The driver was Big Al Villeneueve.

Big Al Villeneueve came from a long line of long-haul truckers and snowmobile racers from up Kapuskasing way. He’d started out as a chartered accountant, but decided the columns on the ledger were too confining. The perfect equilibrium of debits and credits on the balance sheet too predictable. The dull truth of profit and loss mechanical and anti-climactic. The fluid meanderings of cash flow programs held his attention for a while, but eventually even the uncharted adventures of forensic accounting were too tame. Too hemmed in by generally accepted accounting practice and, well, accountants.

Big Al wanted the distant horizon and the open road, and the company of men and women like himself who liked chance encounters and the opportunity to ‘rough it up’ a bit. Finally he found himself in a position where the Cash Over and Short came up way short, and he was out on the street. But he’d skimmed enough to buy his first rig, a Freightliner on auction in Mississippi with 100,000 miles on the clock and a sleeper cab big enough to accommodate the entire wait staff from Hooters in Beaumont, Texas. He had his handle stenciled on the doors of the cab: ‘Buzzsaw’.

Big Al picked up Samantha at a crossroads donut shop in Mitchell, Ontario. Or maybe Samantha picked up Big Al. It wasn’t entirely clear. They were on a milk run, picking up and dropping off till they got to the border.

Big Al had to admit she was a looker, and that appealed to him, but after a few days in the cab together she was starting to get on his nerves. It was always, “…me me me…”, or something about her old pets, or her old boyfriends, or her new sneakers, or her future this, or her future that. It was never, “So Al, how are ya doin’? What’s goin’ on in your life?” The insensitivity and lack of curiosity about others were starting to offend his higher sense of social responsibility. And his appreciation of camaraderie, and the fellowship of the road. When Big Al picked up a hitchhiker, all he wanted was some friendly company for a few miles and a few laughs at the end of the day. To make matters worse, this hitchhiker was also playing hard to get.

When they got to Dunnville Big Al pulled into the motel on the edge of town, and they went into the dining room for dinner. They each ordered the twenty-four-ounce steak with fries and vegetables, and a Black Label. Samantha passed on the pecan pie and coffee.

The dining room was also the motel bar. After a while a country band showed up, and started to set up at the end of the room. Samantha struck up a conversation with the guy who played pedal steel. He was about Big Al’s age, with a ponytail and drooping mustache and piercing blue eyes. Big Al was a bit annoyed, but what the hell, the night was still young. Regulars started to straggle in. Big Al ordered some more brews, including a round for the band, and figured tonight was going to be the night, or something else would have to happen.

What Big Al didn’t figure on is this: with her roots in the rural west of the province, Samantha could drink most men under the table. Big Al kept ordering, and Samantha kept drinking. By this time she’d changed over to boilermakers, and the tab was climbing to the stratosphere. After the band’s first set Samantha invited a couple of local hippies to join them at their table. Both the hippies were skinny, and had hair down to their backsides. They both had piercing brown eyes. Big Al didn’t like them on general principles, but he ordered some more rounds. He didn’t notice his vision blurring. His last cognitive input, before he fell under the table, was of Samantha arm-wrestling with one of the hippies.

When Big Al woke up in the morning he was alone in the sleeper cab. Seagulls were circling overhead. The bar tab was stuffed under his windshield wiper. His mouth felt like someone had dumped old fireplace ashes down his throat. His head was spinning. When he was steady enough to sit up, he looked out the side window. Just in time to see Samantha come out of the jacuzzi unit of the motel, arm-in-arm with the two hippies.

Big Al was some pissed, but Dunnville was no place to just leave somebody. They drove on together toward the border. Big Al was having trouble connecting thoughts, and forming complete sentences, but Samantha rambled on just as she’d been doing now for days. By mid-morning Big Al started to think about the border. How was that going to work? How was he going to explain his rider at Customs and Immigration? What if she didn’t have a drivers’ license, or a birth certificate? He was heading for the crossing at the Peace Bridge. The direction signs on the highway were telling him: Peace Bridge – Right Lane. Peace Bridge – Right Lane. Then it hit him! He wasn’t going to have any peace so long as Samantha was yakking at him! And if he couldn't get a piece, or at least some peace, things were NFG. And if things were NFG, something was going to have to change.

He pulled over and opened the door to let her out. They were on the outskirts of Virgil ON.
-------------------------------
<Rob> Wow, A is on a roll - a streak not to be broken with disjoint, but. Chez Bambi was broken into while I was away and the cogeco lappy and other sacred items stolen. Barb is upset about it, as you all can imagine. So I think we'd best keep her in the work email loop along this Long Bent Highway episode. Barb wants to tip a few on friday and I somehow feel the need for that mini-adventure to the Anchor Bar which by some strange karma was also broken into this week. Picked it up on the US hotline news in Huntsville during a fruitless post-council search for Bubbles and Ricky on Country Cable. Tipping on this side of the river would be good too, of course.

The marathon council meeting without Richard went to 1:00am - 57 items on the regular agenda before the 'closed session' got underway at midnight. I was on for the closed session but took in the entire event - extreme makeover council. The new tree cutting by-law was up for first reading - something that would have been avoided in hindsight. Designed to catch "clear cutters" from "the south" [meaning here] it effectively tarred the local selective cutters, many still using bush horses and cables. It hit them like Liberal gun legislation on a pistol club. They, as a group, were a sight for sore eyes - the last of their kind. All wearing jack shirts, oiled kodiaks and caps with the bizarre branding - one from Coral Gables. They reeked the chamber with stale tobacco, sweat and a whiff of chain saw oil that brought back memories of participating in the Elm tree massacre. Speeches opposing the by-law were heart felt and allegorical. I particularly liked the one threatening a future of plastic toilet paper. Nobody dared laugh because the mood of the room was serious and the message clear. Old Marty chaired and rambled about his days in the bush running horses in pairs skidding "big clear birch for to build them maskitta bombers". And how no bush horse would ever push over an eight-inch tree just to get to bigger ones. And who in their right mind would tromp through and smash a tomato garden just to get to the ripe ones? "Them clear cutters from down south would, ya." The boys all muttered approval - some with dangling unlit roll-your-owns.

Old Marty scuffed the edge off the evening with his repeated "all in flavour? carried". At first I thought he had a dyslectic thing but then he started to get replies from the councillors. "All in flavour? Chocolate. Carried." "All in flavour? Vanilla. Carried." It was necessary and it worked. The meeting from hell went forward.

Highway 11 is becoming an artery all about long haul trucks and truckers. Since Richard's accident there has been another horrendous crash at the same location and this time involving three tractor trailers - "one burnt to the asphalt". The freezing rain was so thick this morning the OPP closed Hwy 11 just north of where I had to be. There was Old Marty in the office bright eyed and bushy tailed. He'd carried it off the night before and he was "mighty relieve to have that one over". He offered me a Scotch mint from his jacket pocket. It had been there for a while but I took it anyway and popped it in my mouth. He smiled some weird approval.

The mood of Samantha Whales Arrives in Virgil ON fits the mood that greeted me this afternoon as I rolled into the Tim Hortons south of Gravenhurst. The lot was full of tractor trailors which is strange, as getting in and out among high snow banks is much more trouble than the open lot in the summer when none of the boys would dare park there. Lord knows why not. The driveway entrance at Highway 11 appeared wet but as I turned into it the car plunged into what was a large crater filled with water to a depth of a foot or more. There is no turning lane and I was going way too fast for such a situation and quite a splash occured as the nose of the car plowed the water and sprayed it up and over the windshield. Many of the truckers were obviously aware of this pot hole and a group of them stood outside the shop smoking and reacted with laughter all around as I emerged from the dunking and parked.

I walked up to the counter and noticed a new woman named Elaine pushing a roller pail and mop behind the end register. Elaine was a big chunky woman, obviously fresh off a disaster requiring the heavy mop. She looked at me and yelled "who's next?" There was a tall lanky trucker with a straggly mustache at the back of another line. I pointed to him and he ambled over in front of me with a nod and plunked a plastic mug on the counter. It was filthy and you could just make out the Tim Horton logo all but rubbed away. "Black with seven sugars" he said with a francophone accent. His shoulder patch said Transport Labrecque Lte. He was obviously very tired. "And two raisin bagel with peanut butter side by one". Peanut butter. My mind snapped back to breakfast in the bar with Bill and Connie in the Madison Boutique Hotel. Continental style with everything, including boilded eggs. Bill had found peanut butter for his toasted bagels. Amazing, I wanted some too. Peanut butter is so under-rated. Elaine punched away at the selection key pad and said "two raisin bagels, one with peanut butter". "No" said the trucker, "side by one". "I can let you do it yourself if you'd like" said Elaine, warm from the mop work and beginning to flush. "No you do it. Peanut butter on one side of each bagel". "That's not in the computer sir" said Elaine, as she walked away to toast the bagels "Damn dat computer" muttered the trucker. "I don't think the computer is the problem" I said.

Vera appeared from the back, opened another till and motioned me over. I ordered my usual and looked down the aisle toward Elaine. Vera rolled her eyes. As I headed for the door I noticed the trucker had followed Elaine down to the bagel toaster. "I can't do that" I could hear Elaine saying with her hands on her hips. A peanut butter war had begun. Tempting as it was to stay and watch, I left the building.
----------------------------------------------------
<Rob> Samantha thanked Big Al for the ride. She waved as the transport moved slowly off toward the border. She set the cream leather suitcase she’d borrowed from her second cousin’s trousseau on the ground, and paused to get her bearings.

The sun was near noon. A gusty breeze was blowing across the highway, cutting the heat and kicking up paper coffee cups and gum wrappers. Down the road a few hundred yards to the right was an abandoned gas station with a battered SUPERTEST sign waving in the wind. A few hundred yards down the road to the left stood an early fifties motel with no cars in the parking lot and a No Vacancy sign out front. Across the road was a donut shop. A Grand Marquis with rusted rocker panels and a torn vinyl roof was parked beside a badly dented green dumpster. A man with an apron was standing in the window, watching.

Samantha picked up the suitcase and started across the road. The man with the apron watched her cross the parking lot. When she got to the door she saw there was no one inside except the man with the apron and a waitress who was wiping down the counter. She stepped inside.

“You one Rucky Rady!”

“Excuse me?”, said Samantha.

“You one Rucky Rady, get dlopped in Virgir ON!”, shouted the man with the apron. He cackled. Then he turned and headed toward the kitchen. “…one Rucky Rady…!! Ha ha ha…!” He disappeared through the kitchen doorway.

Samantha approached the counter.

“Where did that guy get his schtick?”

The waitress rolled her eyes. She was still wiping the counter. She looked at Samantha. She continued chewing her gum.

“He’s right in one way. There’s a lot of run-down old houses in this town you can rent cheap. He owns half of them.”, she said, nodding toward the kitchen. “The other half are owned by a guy named Revan O’Donnell. He’s not from around here, but you might want to see him first.”

Samantha ordered a black coffee and a cruller, and sat down to consider her options.
-------------------------------------------
<Barb> [after a lot of bantering about singing heritage planners in Oakville and how it would never happen in NOTL because the place is too mennon] but some of our best choirs are of the mennon variety
------------------
<Alan]…..Mennon Tabernacle Choir?....
----------------
<Rob> Country Soprano Samantha Whales Thrills Audiences, Choir During Annual Christmas Concerts

Choir's Newest Release, Trucker Love is Spoken Here, Available
---------------------------
<Filshie> ....and we're off and running again.
------------------
<Rob> Samantha Whales stuns donut shop with spontaneous acapella outpouring of the Biker Lord's Prayer

Oh Harley, who art my Heaven
Hallowed be thy seat
Thy braking drums
God speed will be done
on roads as it will on freeways
Get me somehow our daily gas
and forgive me my trespasses
as I forgive those who dillydally in Mazdas
to speed me out of formation
Neither giver or upriver
with thine holy engine
and thine power
hunky dory
forever and ever

And Zen!
---------------------
<Filshie> I tried singing that one but find it doesn't quite scan to the tune that I know for the Lords' Prayer but good try anyhow. I did it in my head. Not out loud.
------------------------
<Rob> Has to be sung out loud and it works perfectly. I was in a choir once in grade 5 when we did the Lord's prayer in choral speaking format. It was pretty cool. The Samantha Whales version worked OK in the Pantry Office but it made the cat's eye run.
----------------------
<Rob> No takers for QuesT 06 The Long Bent Highway http://spaces.msn.com/members/bent06/ Figures. I'm therefore coding this golden stuff as fast as I can but A keeps pumping it out even faster. I feel sort of like Lucy on the cake icing line. The Faaaaaaaak stuff is all cut out and the banter about Neil Young, though interesting, is dumped. Headway is being made. A's south american imagery is in the mill for sizing. There seems to be a focus after all to this episode. Coding this much html in a frames format is not all that simple especially for an old broken down self-taught planificationer. Like they say on extreme makeover - move it move it move it. Senior moment. Bumped into Yuli today at the VirgilON Valumart. I had a basket with a dozen eggs, pound of butter, romaine, bananas, and a carton of milk in the other hand. I said "hey man how goes the battle?" to which he replies "fine, are you buying food?"

<Alan>It would be a strange thing indeed if Art...in this case in the form of QuesT 06...should ever imitate Life. Read on...

Samantha’s First Home

By the time Lil arrived in Virgil ON, Samantha was well-established. She was living in a monster house in a gated community developed by Reingold Krauthammer’s Hard Line Construction in what had been the village schoolyard. But it wasn’t always like that.

Samantha’s first ‘home’ had been a tiny clapboard bungalow she rented from Revan O’Donnell. Revan owned two or three dozen fixer-uppers scattered across town. A circus had come to town and set up shop permanently in the guise of a little theatre group. Revan provided badly needed housing to indigent actors and stagehands. The villagers were happy to get them off the streets at night. The performers weren’t fussy about where they lived so long as they had a place to drink the cheap local wine out of a bottle and act up. The village council didn’t care one way or another so long as no one complained, so never sent the property standards inspector to any of Revan’s houses.

The bungalow had a space heater for the winter and a furniture store in the backyard. This was because of a flaw in the village zoning ordnance. The flaw allowed furniture stores anywhere in the village. This provision had been put in the ordnance in the early Fifties when Big Jake’s younger brother Jaakmann had been in furniture. It was intended to give Jaakmann some ‘flexibility’ in where he could operate. It stayed in the ordnance over the years even though Jaakmann eventually got out of furniture and went into hot tubs and backyard gazebos.

The furniture store in the backyard was a real nuisance, mainly because the trucks would arrive at all hours to pick up or drop off. The guys on the loading dock tended to be noisy and uncouth. Lights shone in the bedroom window. Samantha frequently had her sleep interrupted.

That said, the straw that broke the camel’s back happened one afternoon when Samantha came home from work. She found that, because of rotten floorboards, the toilet had fallen through into the basement and was resting upside down on the dirt floor. Revan refused to fix it. He claimed that obviously Samantha had put too much weight on it, and she should slim down a little. Samantha moved out that very day.

The villagers felt that even though neither Revan nor Samantha was “from around here”, a side should be taken on this issue. They sympathized with Samantha. After all, most of them had indoor plumbing, and could appreciate her upset. They ratted Revan out to the property standards inspector. The property standards inspector made an inspection, and told Revan a toilet lying upside down on a dirt basement floor did not meet code. The inspector ordered Revan to fix it. Revan went to the council, claiming unfair treatment.

This was how Samantha came to Big Jake’s attention.

Samantha Sells Trucks

When Big Jake first saw Samantha, he saw Potential. Samantha would quickly turn that Potential into Profit. For Big Jake, and for herself.

Big Jake offered Samantha a job at the dealership selling and leasing light trucks and vans. Samantha’s knowledge of trucks was limited to what she knew from hitchhiking. But she did her homework. She came to the conclusion that as a general merchandise category, pick-up trucks had good marketing potential in farm country. That’s where she would start.

She did more homework. She poured over factory option lists and did affinity charts for dealer-installed up-grades. The permutations and combinations of special equipment became arithmetic, then exponential. For less committed salespersons this was mind-numbing work in the extreme. But Samantha persevered. She discovered that of the seemingly endless possibilities, the single highest-margin option was chrome bumpers. That was the option she would sell.

Until that point in the village’s history the farmers who tilled the fields and bought the pick-up trucks were from that generation who had not had chrome bumpers in the old country. They saw no reason to have them now. Chrome was bad business when the tractor broke or the mower needed new teeth. Besides, there was a cultural imperative within the community. It frowned on chrome, and anything else that was bright and shiny. There was no raz-ma-taz in Virgil ON.

But history was on Samantha’s side! The village was on the cusp of change! The old ways were falling away. The younger residents were slowly tuning in to the outside world. Many of them had transistor radios, and had seen television. It was an evolutionary process that would take several generations to complete, a process for which there would often be one step forward followed by two or three steps back. But by the time Samantha arrived there was a new generation of farm boys who could appreciate the novelty of chrome bumpers. They could see their faces reflected in them! History gave Samantha the market niche she needed.

Samantha took up the challenge methodically, one truck at a time. The first prospect was a bit shy. The first sale took some gentle persuasion. But after the first few sales, word of mouth kicked in. The boys started swarming the truck lot. Big Jake could not get new units fast enough. Before he knew what was happening, he was back-ordered!

Within a year all the boys on every concession road had a brand new pick-up truck with chrome bumpers. Each of them also had a miniature eight ball that dangled from a chain on the inside rear-view mirror. The eight ball was a special gift from Samantha, a ‘no charge option’ or token of appreciation for their custom. The boys seemed more proud of the eight ball danglers than the actual trucks. They got all puffed up when they got together at the crossroads restaurant for breakfast, or bumped into each other at the seed and feed, or met for the Friday-evening Bible reading. Having a dangler was like having a membership in an exclusive club. Some of the boys, who were already married, kept quiet about their danglers, and locked them up in the milk house where their wives wouldn’t find them. But they were pleased with them nevertheless.

Big Jake was rich, even then. But had the professors in the MBA program at the post-graduate high school up on the hill done a case study of his business career, they would have discovered that it was chrome bumpers that made Big Jake really rich.

Big Jake gave Samantha a truck of her own.

<Rob>Effie Bottom walked into the truck dealership on a rainy monday morning. Nobody noticed her until Big Jake jumped to his feet spilling a large triple triple into his accordian file. "Faaaak" he muttered, then strode forward arms extended, "why Effie Bottoms I haven't seen you in a coons age, how are you?" "Bottom, you idiot" said Effie.

Effie came from a long line of Bottoms. The pioneer family for whom Bottom Line was named. The family and the geographic location of their farm on the first concession had led to a perpetual misunderstanding among the town folk. Everyone assumed Bottom Line was named following the convention of location as in Front Street, Middle Road, Upper Middle Road, Town Line etc. But in Effie's case there was a Bottom family and Bottom Line had always been their road. And to the Bottoms all Mennons were idiots.

"I come for a dangler for Seer" said Effie. "Oh you want to talk to Samantha?" asked Big Jake as Samantha emerged from her office. "Chrome for your home" laughed Big Jake. "Shutup you idiot" said Effie as Samantha quietly motioned Effie towards a black V8hemi pickup on the showroom floor. "Would Seer like a black pickup, is he your son?" asked Samantha. "Yes, he's too shy to come in by himself" said Effie.

Seer was rarely seen or heard from in VirgilON. His real name was Absolum but as a young man he'd gotten drunk at the Lancaster track and visited a tattoo parlour, only to wake up with a third eye in the middle of his forehead. From that point forward, the boys called him Seer.

As Samantha closed the deal, Effie dropped a bombshell. "I knew your daddy" said Effie as she signed the purchase papers. Samantha's mouth dropped open slightly. "His name was Josepheron, they called him Josie" said Effie. "You must be mistaken" said Samantha. Effie looked at her intently, then stood up and turned towards the door. "When can you deliver his dangler?" she asked.

<Susan F.>
There was to be a prize. A pair of gold danglers. Not just gold plated but honest to goodness karat gold. European gold, the kind with the ruddy tinge that looks so warm against flesh.

<Alan>
...more characters, more setting, more plot development, more mystery...I love it!...and all of it careening toward a crashing climax, or denouement, or merely a blip in the program, in The Angel's Arms.....

Samantha Scores a 'Shag Wagon'

After her conquest of the pick-up market, Samantha turned her attention to delivery vans. Every member of the Main Street Business Association needed a delivery van for something. Main Street was lined with ratty old delivery vans every day of the week except Sunday. The finish on them had dulled, the windshields were cracked, and in many cases the hubcaps were either dented or missing. These vans had done a lot of heavy lifting. Clearly it was time to replace the fleet.

Delivery vans tended to be low-margin units unless they were specially equipped. Samantha went back to the option lists. Once again chrome bumpers showed a lot of promise. But the big-ticket item was the ‘shag wagon’ conversion.

The brochures did not explain where the term ‘shag wagon’ came from.

In essence the ‘shag wagon’ conversion was a delivery van outfitted with a bar fridge big enough for a two-four, a propane stove big enough to fry back bacon, and an extra jack in the rear for an extra radio speaker. The speakers themselves were another option. There was also a fold-down cot for afternoon naps, and the rubber flooring was replaced with Dupont high-denier carpeting. The front seats swung around so the back bacon could be served to the buds without them having to turn around. And the vans could be ordered with the new extra-cost ‘metallic’ paint and full-wheel chrome hubcaps.

This was a new concept for the merchants. It took a lot of hard selling. Samantha spent a lot of time demonstrating the benefits of the conversion. But eventually, buy they did. And like the pick-ups, after the first early sales and the word of mouth, sales just took off.

Within a second year Main Street was lined with new delivery vans. A few had been ordered with the optional side window glass, but most were panel-sided. This was said to prevent prying eyes from seeing what was inside. They all had chrome bumpers, metallic paint, and chrome hubcaps. Even Revan O’Donnell bought a delivery van with the ‘shag wagon’ conversion to use in the maintenance side of his business. His was ‘fully loaded’ with the side window glass. He thought it would be good for business to show off his stepladders.

“He’s not from around here”, said Big Jake, “but (laughing) we’ll take his money anyway!”

Most of the Main Street retailers also used their ‘shag wagon’ conversion vans to camp out along the drainage ditches along Bottom Line. The vans were really handy for weekend trout hunting. But two or three of the merchants figured out they could take their vans on deliveries to Florida with women who were not immediate family members. Complaints were made to the Better Business Bureau that Samantha had aided and abetted these deliveries. Big Jake intervened on Samantha’s behalf. The complaints were summarily dismissed.

Big Jake was now really really rich. He gave Samantha a van of her own. It was panel-sided.

But Big Jake had already seen a new opportunity for his protégé. He would move Samantha into local government.

<Rob>
Interesting to learn of the 'shag wagon' experiences in VirgilON. It is no doubt evidence that Samantha had connections in The Bay Area, long old connections. After WW2, the Van Wilson company had dabbled in alternative uses for their pre-war popular line of delivery vans. The company actually had its roots in horse-drawn covered box waggons used by the likes of Jackson Bread and Borden's Milk. Some of the boys just back from the German lines with an appreciation of the 'volkswagen' mass appeal convinced management at Van Wilson to produce something they called a 'shagenwagen'. The first rolled off the Van Wilson line in the Bay Area but immediately incurred the wrath of thousands who related the term 'shagenwagen' to the unfortunate reputation of several armoured Panzer divisions in eastern Europe. The 'shagenwagen' was pulled from the line immediately but the concept of fusion modelling was born in the minds of many living in the Bay Area. But nothing ever came of it.

The term 'shag wagon' spawned no evil links in the minds of the Main Street merchants. Few of them had served overseas although some had been drafted to guard the local canals and locks. Revan's father 'Blink' acquired his nickname while fooling around with his Lee Enfield one foggy Sunday morning on Lock 2. Anyway, the revolutionary concept to sweep VirgilON was the notion of custom "conversions" or fusion thinking. Big Jake saw it coming just in time to move his protege into the area of local politics. The conversion mania that ran through VirgilON would take on some amazing proportions and distortions before it died out. At its peek, old Willy Kesey experimented with bus conversions - the first to make such an attempt. His first effort, which ended in the biggest barn fire in VirgilON history, included a wood stove mounted in the rear with a chimney up through a strategic hole in the roof. The motivation was to be able to travel and live in comfort anywhere along the way, and stop where there was wood to burn for heat and cooking - which was almost anywhere along country roads. Experimentation with other fuels proved disastrous in the end but the concept didn't die.

A Bay Area high steel worker, Paul Head, mused in his memoirs "when we did busses, we always thought about Willy's first Furthur before we cut the roof".

<Rob>
Effie Bottom's alarm bells went off when she saw Mack Bowrey's pickup parked behind the old Farkin barn, for the third time that week.

"The rumours must be true" she thought. Stories were bouncing around the donut shop that Mack Bowery, a local tract housing builder, was planning something big for the infamous Farkin barn. Revan O'Donnell had originally floated the idea of converting the barn into accessible condos for retiring US Coast Guard workers but didn't have the nerve, given the barn's illustrious history described in the shotgun golf episode. The Guard would not long forget the humiliation of Commander Buck Coffin and his crew at the hands of a common monkey. Talk of the Farkin barn died down.

Everyone thought Mack Bowery was intent on a new spa hotel at the Homer salt spring. Apparently, Lil had shown quite an interest in running it for a share in the profits. Her recroom spa had outgrown the provisions of the local zoning code and besides most of the guys were up to her old tricks with herbal teas and the gris gris bag. When Big Jack Mennon overheard Samantha talking to Mack Bowery about exotic dancing lessons he couldn't make hyde nor hair of it and said so to Effie Bottom when she came in to pick up Zebulon's dangler. "You are the most idiotic Mennon of the bunch" Effie had spit in reply. "Maybe not" Effie thought to herself as she watched Mack Bowrey hustling back and forth between his pickup and the barn.

Then down the lane came yet another pickup truck with the telltale local chrome bumpers. Effie watched intently from the back right of way across the field and over the drain. Out jumped Samantha Whales and Penelope Whyte-Badger dressed in matched pairs of Roy Rogers pearl handled guns, red cowboy hats and plaid shirts. And not much else. "Well I'll be!!" thought Effie as Mack Bowery emerged from the barn with his shock of white hair and waving his arms with his usual bravado.

<Alan>Samantha Gets Set

Big Jake, as Head of Council, interrupted the gin rummy game to call the meeting to order. Big Jake’s nephew Jorge, who was born in Uruguay, and who had trained as a Champagne Music Maker with Lawrence Welk, was asked to lead the singing of the national anthem.

Big Jake’s big voice boomed through the room. Big Jake still had some of the old country inflections. When they got to the crescendo at the end of the anthem it sounded like Big Jake sang:

O Vaterland
Ve schtand
On gard
Fur dee!

Samantha winced.

The various citizen complainers who were in the gallery sat down. They were already muttering under their breath. Effie Bottom took her usual seat on the aisle in the second pew.

There was only one item on the agenda. It was about inventing a position for the village’s new hire, Samantha Whales. Big Jake had stick handled the recruiting drive himself. Now he encouraged brainstorming and thinking outside the box to make sure the Council got the ‘best fit’ they could between the new hire and the new job. All the Council had to do was find a good job title. Big Jake and the Village Clerk would fill in the details.

One by one the councilors stood up to speak to the attributes of the new hire. They went round the council table two or three times. Big Jake had to remind them of the expected outcome for the meeting. He suggested they encourage multi-tasking by grouping two or more position titles. After a long pause some ideas started coming forward:

Official Auditor/Head Research Scientist

Physical Asset Expeditor/Weapons Negotiator

Communications Specialist/Maritime Forces Commander

Cemetery Supervisor/Deputy Air Raid Warden

Chief Travel Agent/Emergency Response Director

Lead Prosecutor/Banned Substances Investigator

There was a general feeling that the last positions would by useful during the annual Stampede. However, overall the possibilities seemed to outweigh the capacity to make a decision. The meeting started to drag. The complainers started to mutter even louder under their breath. Big Jake ordered a time out, and the Council recessed to the washroom. When they came out the decision was announced.

Samantha, who had never seen a balance sheet or been in a drug lab in her life, was appointed Official Auditor/Banned Substances Investigator. The terms and conditions of employment were the same as Juncke (pronounced ‘Hunk’) Mennon’s as Village Solicitor: lifetime no-cut with a substantial signing bonus and optional annual performance bonus. Like all village positions it came with a complimentary membership in the local golf club.

Big Jake banged the gavel down to close the meeting. The complainers got up and filed out, still muttering under their breath. Effie Bottom shot a meaningful glance to the cub reporter from the local advertising tabloid.

Samantha got up to leave. As she reached the door Big Jake elbowed the Village Clerk. Nodding toward the door he enthused, “That’s Samantha Whales!”

The Village Clerk, whose hearing was trained to maneuver through Big Jake’s old country inflections and find every nuance, heard Big Jake say, “That Samantha wails!”

To which the Village Clerk could only reply, “…rilly…”

Samantha was set for life, in Virgil ON.

(EDITOR’S NOTE: Some lurkers will no doubt realize that the lame pun involving the name of one of the characters in this travelogue has now been used for the second time. Cries of “Fowl!” and other indications of outrage will be gratefully received if it happens a third time.)

<Rob> QuesT06bloggo is right up and squared for action Cap'n A. On upload, Big Jake sort of clumped down the old steps of the Town Hall and noticed that his ears were still ringing from Jorge's twills in the anthem - something he said Welk once called his "specio falchetio" effect. Whatever it was, bothered big Head's ears until his eyes focussed on something across the street that made his gater mouth drop open. "Well don't that bar none" gasped the big man as others also noticed a group of nuns seated at the new Red Rider Leg Lamp Outdoor Cafe.

"Red's Good Eats", an old establishment from way down Sublime Street had moved uptown and opened for business just in time for the Council and its perpetual madding crowd to pour out onto the street. At the same time, the Angels' Arms, not wanting to loose the prime season to Red, launched their Angels' Arms Fete with a parade of maidens in angels' arms thematic along the full length of main street. It was truly a sight to be seen in VirgilON that afternoon.

<Alan> WARNING: The following episode of ‘QuesT 06 – The Long Bent Highway’ is intended for very advanced readers. Due to the limitations of space on your screen, printing prior to reading is highly recommended. A hi-liter and margin notes will be helpful.

In The Angels’ Arms

The insurance adjuster opened the door and stepped inside. He approached the bar, planted both feet firmly on the plank floor, and ordered the usual: a Seagram’s and Seven. He’d just had a hard day. Investigating suspected arson in the village was always like that. He’d never seen a place where the locals protected arsonists like they did in the village. Now he needed that end-of-day drink. The Angels’ Arms looked like the right place.

The Angels’ Arms had a lot of history. It was an old watering hole that dated back to the early days of the village. It had had its ups and downs, but somehow survived the torments of generations of patrons, and the uncertainties of history. Whenever the village was burned down, The Angels’ Arms was burned down too. When the village was rebuilt, The Angels’ Arms was rebuilt too. Now its regulars referred to it as “The AA”. They would say, “Let’s go down to ‘The AA’ and get a drink.” Then they would laugh.

The AA was owned by Zbigniew Frauleinkeiwicz. Frauleinkeiwicz was an illegal immigrant from the Baltic States. When he arrived in his adopted country he parlayed bogus bank credit cards into a health card, the health card into a driver’s license, the driver’s license into landed immigrant status, and finally into citizenship. Meanwhile the cash advances on the credit cards provided the seed money for his first investment. He bought a fixer-upper from Revan O’Donnell. The villagers always took it as gospel that Frauleinkeiwicz was working with ‘dirty money’. The village’s detractors tended to think that, otherwise, the money wouldn’t be here.

The villagers were also quick to point out that Frauleinkeiwicz, like so many others in the village, was ‘not from around here’. In fact they were quite puzzled by him. By the time he arrived in the village Frauleinkeiwicz had worked up an ‘assumed identity’, and changed his name to C Mai Lai. He insisted on being called ‘Mr. C’ for short. If you met Mr. C in person you thought you were dealing with a blond-haired blue-eyed Caucasian with a large growth on his left cheekbone. But if you talked to him on the phone you thought you were dealing with a recent immigrant from the Far East who had not progressed very far with ESL. The villagers considered this quite eccentric, and possibly undesirably so. They didn’t appreciate the value of a good schtick.

When Samantha arrived in the village Mr. C owned half the fixer-uppers, the donut shop out by the highway, and The Angels’ Arms. It was Mr. C’s schtick that had greeted Samantha the day she was dropped off by Big Al Villeneuve.

*********

The insurance adjuster took a stool at the bar and pulled his bulk up onto it. His plan was to start exercising as soon as he retired. All he had to do was solve this one last suspected arson, and he could wander out to pasture. The toughest one by far had been that tire fire in Hagersville. He got really close on that one, but by the end of the investigation all he had for reliable evidence were some tire tracks in the mud and a pile of chicken bones. They were all wing bones. He suspected that whoever was in there eating the chicken wings was responsible for the fire, but he could never pin it on anybody. The Fire Marshall put it down to “unexplained causes”, and closed the file.

The insurance adjuster swiveled on his stool and looked around. The bartender was a youngish man with shaved head and a full beard on the right side of his face. His left arm was missing below the shoulder. The insurance adjuster reckoned the half beard was a way of balancing around the disability.

There were two women sitting down the bar to his right. They were engaging in a quiet conversation. One was a big-boned blond in a blue pinstripe suit and ruffled white blouse. She was wearing stiletto heels and drinking a martini. The other was an auburn-haired knockout in denim. She had a gris-gris bag slung over her shoulder, and was drinking Southern Comfort. They were both real lookers.

Most of the tables were occupied, but customers seemed to keep drifting in and out through a myriad of doorways. The closer he looked the more doorways he found. They were hidden in the shadows and dark corners of the irregular shaped room. None of the doors had an Exit sign as required by the fire code.

There were two people seated at a table in a back corner. One was a man, the other was a woman old enough to be the man’s mother. The man had a third eye in the middle of his forehead. Another couple was seated at a table with their backs to the wall. They both appeared to have the usual number of eyes. A Brownie Hawkeye flash camera was sitting on the table in front of them. They looked pretty serious in comparison to the other clientele.

“Who are they?” asked the insurance adjuster, nodding toward the table with the camera.

The bartender said, “She works for the village. She issues permits for septic tanks and burials. The guy with her is her husband. He never says very much, but he carries that camera around with him everywhere he goes. If she ever says no, you’ve got a problem.”

“You’ve got a disposal problem”, said the insurance adjuster.

“Rilly”, said the bartender. He returned to wiping glasses.

*********

The conversation at the bar rose slowly above the murmur of the room. The insurance adjuster heard something like this:

“I went to that store out by the super-highway yesterday. To get some closet organizers.”

“Why do you want those?”

“I don’t know. I suddenly felt that life’s too short to have to go rummaging through old trunks and packing crates for stuff I need every day.”

“Oh.”

“It was weird. When I drove up to it I saw all this blue and yellow splashed all over the store. It reminded me of those movies I saw a few years ago. ‘I Am Curious Blue’. ‘I Am Curious Yellow’. I don’t remember what the hell they were about.”

“I know what you mean. That store reminds me of all the arguments I had at college with my boyfriend.”

“Boyfriend?”

“Yes, boyfriend. About movies. Arguments like who made the most dull and morally vacuous movies, Bergman or Bunuel. Arguments like that.”

“The whole problem with Bergman is he wasn’t a communist. If you’re a communist sex is a lot better. It would have cheered him up. His movies would’ve been more fun”.

“And Bunuel?”

“He was a communist! So he had that discreet charm. I’ll bet sex with Bunuel was great. His movies were lots of fun.”

“Anyway, it was the weirdest experience. When I got inside, you have to follow these lines and arrows on the floor. And everybody follows them. Like it’s the Yellow Brick Road or something. Somebody told me at their stores in Switzerland nobody ever goes against the arrows, even the little kids.”

“I know what you mean.”

“And the thing that really weirded me out was, like, the signs on everything. They tell you what the thing is, then put some other word in upper case right beside it that you have no idea what it means. But it sounds weird. Like ‘brocade tea cozy PLOK’”.

“Oh yeah, I know what you mean! ‘pine vanity cabinet KRAK’!”

The women started to giggle.

The bartender added, “acrylic serving tray RATGAS”. The women laughed louder.

One of the customers at a table within earshot offered, “web patio chair DIKKNOSER”.

Quiet laughter rolled across the room. Someone from a table in a corner yelled, “storage crate with castors BUMHOLLE.” The room erupted in loud laughter and applause.

A deep male voice bellowed from down the corridor toward the washrooms, “glass tealight holder BALLSNOCKAR”.

One of the actors from the little theatre group shouted out, “lacquered ash veneer bookcase BUTSLAAM”. His companion replied with, “aluminum napkin holder ARSPINKSTAR.” The room replied with howls of mock protest and pounding on the tabletops.

By this time the room was in pandemonium. Someone threw a quarter in the jukebox, and the entire crowd jumped up to dance.

The insurance adjuster turned to the bartender. “Is it always like this in here?”

“Ya”, said the bartender. “They start on Monday nights taking a run at the Crown Corporations. It’s a kind of warm-up. Then on Tuesdays and Wednesdays they go after the real sacred cows. Last week it was Canadian Wheel and Tire for their “Skate Like a Man” hockey promotion. The week before that they went after GM for something called “Girls Take Over”. It was ads for some kind of hot-rod Pontiac. I don’t remember that one. I guess it was before my time.”

“Don’t worry about it,” said the insurance adjuster. “There’s nothing new in advertising. It’s all just the same subliminal messages and recycled images. Mostly t&a. It’ll come around again.”

*********

As soon as Mr. C bought The AA he made some moves to improve it. He put a spa in the basement.

Mr. C had always wanted to be in the ‘hands-on full-body’ business. He had the old elephant furnace and coal bins ripped out, and the best carpenters he could find who would work off-scale install fitness rooms, massage rooms, reiki rooms, yoga rooms, aromatherapy rooms, a sauna, a whirlpool, and all the other accoutrements of a first class facility. He wired in a first class sound system, and bought a bunch of Yanni tapes. He hired a female greeter from a VIP club in The Falls to run the establishment, and a couple of (unregistered) massage therapists to work it.

One feature that he didn’t think through was the sawdust. The AA had been one of those heritage watering holes where they put sawdust on the floor. Over the decades the sawdust had worked its way in between the floorboards. When The AA was busy, which was most of the time, sawdust would seep through the ceiling of the spa. The AA was especially busy at night, and that’s when most of the clients came to the spa for the signature ‘Hands-on Full-Body Treatment’.

The sawdust would cling to the oil covering the clients’ bodies, and cover the forearms of the (unregistered) massage therapists. Unfortunately, there was not enough headroom in the basement to install showers. As a result, the clients walked out coated in sawdust. Some noticed, some didn’t. Most of the villagers were unfamiliar with the spa experience so, except the few who’d been to Lil’s spa, left without question. They dutifully put their clothes in the laundry as soon as they got home.

The greeter and the (unregistered) massage therapists always went upstairs to The AA for a drink after work. The greeter sat with Samantha and Lil at the bar, and the (unregistered) massage therapists found a table at the back. The bartender brought them large finger bowls with lemon water, and two towels.

*********

A new guy walked up to the bar and took a stool beside the insurance adjuster. He ordered a Carling Black Label. The insurance adjuster noticed he had a cauliflower ear, and a speech impediment. They fell into a normal manly conversation about their business careers. Real estate and insurance, the making for real soul mates. When the insurance adjuster heard about the fixer-uppers he made a mental note to tell Sales so they could get onto this guy about fire insurance.

Naturally the insurance adjuster had a few stories about investigations he’d done. All of them success stories. One was about a house fire years ago, in The Bay Area. House totally destroyed. Owners ran off, left a kid in the care of his aunt. The aunt had a real rack on her. The kid remembered nothing, except the license numbers on the two Cadillac’s the arsonists took off in. They traced the plates to some motel in Tallahassee, Florida, and busted them naked in the jacuzzi. Turns out, in that county there’s an ordinance that specifically prohibits abandoning a kid to an over-sexed aunt. They put them away for life.

The new guy listened in silence. He seemed to be gazing somewhere far away. Creases appeared on his brow, as if he was studying something really hard. He up-ended his glass of beer, then put it down gently on the bar. He looked a little confused. Then he excused himself to go down to the jakes. Or out to the parking lot. He wasn’t sure.

The insurance adjuster thought, “Nice fella. Too bad about that ear.”

*********

From out of nowhere came a blinding flash. Everything in the room stopped. The insurance adjuster blinked to clear his vision. All the patrons were doing the same, except the guy with the third eye. The third eye was not blinking.

When his vision cleared the insurance adjuster saw, out of the corner of one eye, the Brownie Hawkeye being returned to the tabletop. Out of the corner of the other eye he saw a low profile moving fast across the room. The long-armed figure leaped up onto the stool beside him.

Thing was decked out in his custard cream linen zoot with lime green linen/cotton blend shirt and pineapple yellow silk tie with giant Christ the Redeemer, arms outstretched, in bright aubergine. He was wearing sunglasses, and snakeskin cowboy boots. He took off his headset, and put it on the bar. The sound of Mary Martin singing, “No I’ll never grow up…not me!” from Peter Pan came from the headset. Thing dabbed some Tiger Balm onto the center of his forehead.

The insurance adjuster looked at the bartender. The bartender said, “He’s not from around here.”

The insurance adjuster said, “Oh.”

The bartender continued, “He showed up quite a few years ago with two guys from outta town selling snakeskin boots. Been in and out of town ever since. But he’s a huge local hero. Last year he saved a whole crew of mariners off a coast guard boat that capsized in The River. The Council gave him the Key to the Village.”

The insurance adjuster said, “Oh” again.

The bartender set Thing up with the usual: a banana daiquiri with a double aguardente straight up on the side.

The insurance adjuster, who’d been drinking moderately to this point, ordered a double Seagram’s and Seven. He glanced at Thing. Thing was idly stirring his daiquiri with his index finger, and staring blankly at the mirror facing the bar. The insurance adjuster looked back at the bartender.

The bartender said, “He’s marking time till his girlfriend gets here.”

“On what, a banana boat?” thought the insurance adjuster.

“She’s coming in from Manaus on a banana boat outta Guatemala. Should arrive in The Bay Area next Tuesday”.

The insurance adjuster glanced at Thing again. Thing was looking at the bartender with a smile on his face. He appeared to have focused. A thought balloon had appeared above Thing’s head. In the thought balloon appeared one word. That word was, “Righteous!”

The insurance adjuster drained his drink.

*********

Finally the bartender announced closing time. The crowd shouted mock protests, but started moving for the door. The (unregistered) massage therapists went home to get under a shower. The actors two-stepped out, each with a hand in the other’s crotch, to go home and drink some cheap local wine and act up. Samantha and Lil left arm in arm. They had a relationship that all the men in the village could only speculate on, and all the women envied.

“Who’s the big blond?” asked the insurance adjuster.

“That’s Samantha Whales”, said the bartender.

“She certainly does”, said the insurance adjuster.

The insurance adjuster was the last to leave. The bartender locked the door behind him, and turned back to the bar. Thing was pouring them a nightcap.

<Rob>
A thought balloon popped above Thing's left ear as the Angels' Arms bar tender squeeked the old key in the lock. It said "Watch your ass". "That's an odd Thing thought balloon" thought the bartender as the sound of a cocking military 45 was clearly audible through the old inn door. "Did you hear that?" asked the bartender. "Oh ya babe - dive for cover" said a Thing thought balloon hanging in mid air above the bar. Thing was nowhere to be seen. Outside, Commander Buck Coffin fired his long barrel 45 magnum at the lock mechanism of the old inn door. Dust and pine splinters filled the vestibule and the bar tender was blown all the way back to the bar. For a few moments he was back in the kitchen in the cherries jubilee explosion. As his head cleared he could see Commander Buck walking through the dusty back-lit doorway. He kicked the splintered door aside and gestured toward it with his big 45 as if to say "don't mover or I'll shoot you again".

Commander Buck was in full US Coast Guard uniform. Thing peered up from behind the bar and recognized the American immediately as his "best-shot-evar!!" target at the Farkin Barn shotgun golf encounter. Thing knew exactly why Commander Buck's head bulged high and outside over his left ear. Then, the American slowly turned back to the dusty doorway and waved the 45 in the air motioning someone to come in. A man and a woman appeared in the doorway as silouettes in the street light. It was Billy Hillyard the fort master, and Blueberry Hill in tears.

As they all walked into the dim light of the bar, Thing could see that Billy Hillyard was handcuffed. His heart leaped as he saw Blueberry. "Hillyard goes back over the river with me" said Commander Buck. "He's been smuggling cigarettes for years and its all over - he's headed for justice US style - crowbar hotel. The girl needs to see the ape." Blueberry sobbed and Thing made a thought balloon with nothing in it.

Thing thought balloon [Ttb]: "Last night we said a great many things. You said I was to do the thinking for both of us. Well, I've done a lot of it since then, and it all adds up to one thing: you're getting on that boat with Billy where you belong."

Blueberry: But, Thing, no, I... I...

Thing thought balloon [Ttb]: "Now, you've got to listen to me! You have any idea what you'd have to look forward to if you stayed here? Nine chances out of ten, we'd both wind up in the crowbar hotel. Isn't that true, Commander?"

Commander Buck: "I'm afraid General Leghorn would insist."

Blueberry: "You're saying this only to make me go."

Thing thought balloon [Ttb]: "I'm saying it because it's true. Inside of us, we both know you belong with Billy. You're part of his work, the thing that keeps him going. If that boat leaves the dock and you're not with him, you'll regret it. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life."

Blueberry: "But what about us?"

Thing thought balloon [Ttb]: "We'll always have VirgilON. We didn't have, we, we lost it until you came to the Angels' Arms. We got it back last night."

Blueberry: "When I said I would never leave you."

Thing thought balloon [Ttb]: "And you never will. But I've got a job to do, too. Where I'm going, you can't follow. What I've got to do, you can't be any part of. Blueberry, I'm no good at being noble, but it doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans [pard the pun] in this crazy world. Someday you'll understand that. Now, now... Here's looking at you kid."